


Mend

by Taeyn



Series: a lot of explosions for two people blending in [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/M, Healing, Hurt, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Recovery, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 12:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9819872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeyn/pseuds/Taeyn
Summary: Hurt isn’t always a feeling. Sometimes it’s a place. For Jyn, that place was bright and new, crisp uniforms and closed doors. It was a place where people talked aboutdreams, andachievement, andpoint of no return, a place where her mother’s eyes stayed open when she slept.





	

Hurt isn’t always a feeling. Sometimes it’s a place. For Jyn, that place was bright and new, crisp uniforms and closed doors. It was a place where people talked about _dreams_ , and _achievement_ , and _point of no return_ , a place where her mother’s eyes stayed open when she slept.

Jyn was four years old when they escaped. They’d walked-  _quickly, quickly_ \- through so many squeaky halls, screens that scanned and beeped, all the tiny noises that seemed to say _go_.

She didn’t remember the last door, or her last glimpse of the passageway. The final screen had made a different sound, not the encouraging green blip, but a lower jab, flashed red. Jyn hadn’t heard that noise in their vast, shiny home before. But she saw her father’s face, knew without asking that it didn’t mean _go_.

It meant _run_.

-

“I get it,” Bodhi murmured. It had taken as much for him to come back as it did to set out, and guilt had a habit of spilling into truth. “For me, it’s a time. It’s the hours between Jedha and Eadu, when I tried not to wonder what I was carrying. And then I tried not to _know_ what I was carrying. And then... I tried not to imagine what would happen to what I was carrying when I arrived.”

Jyn turned for another lap of the hangar, Bodhi’s arm hooked over her shoulders.

“I was very ill, one flight,” he said eventually, coughed as his balance faltered. “Those old zeta-class shuttles, the gravity regulators are always the first thing to go.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Jyn. _Learn anything at the right bar._ She grimaced, sympathetic. “That must’ve been... memorable.”

“That’s one way to describe it,” Bodhi admitted, breathed out a laugh. Then, quieter, _“_ _less time to think_ is another.”

They paused between the cargo containers, Bodhi wiped his face on his jacket.

“It’s on Coruscant,” Jyn said swiftly, because they were only words after all. “The central facility. We were there for three years, before my parents escaped to Lah’mu. It’s where my father worked on-”

There was an echo as Bodhi stumbled, caught himself in time. Jyn inwardly cursed. She’d been walking too fast.

“Where he worked on the project?” Bodhi said determinedly, straightened and clutched below his ribs. Jyn slowed them, steadied her grip.

 _Where he worked on the Death Star,_ she wanted to force herself to say.

“It must have been awful,” Bodhi whispered first.

Jyn didn’t smile, she didn’t know why she wanted to. She remembered little more than glimpses, a holodrama called _The Octave Stairway_ , her nanny droid named Mac-Vee. She had coloured pictures for her father, sometimes drew him a cape too. Because that was what heroes looked like.

“I hate it,” said Jyn, and her voice had grown cold, “because it wasn’t awful at all.”

-

“The central facility. It’s been added to the surveillance charts.”

K-2SO peered across the comms array, a cluster of severed wires in each hand. Jyn had left the statement purposefully open, didn’t break the droid’s gaze.

“Oh I’m sorry,” K-2 said flatly. “For a moment I misinterpreted that as a question.”

“Cassian’s assigned to the route,” Jyn tried again, realised her arms had caged around her middle. She uncrossed them, forced a looseness that wasn’t there. “Either that, or he volunteered for it.”

K-2 tipped his head a fraction, affecting a posture that Jyn read as vaguely curious. Or vaguely ironic.

“These insights are simply fascinating,” he answered. “I wonder if you’ve ever considered a career in probability and analysis.”

Jyn sighed, felt her mouth twitch at the corner.

“Clearly a better choice than a career in subtlety,” she offered. What K-2 made of this she couldn’t quite tell, but he did set down the cables to face her.

“I don’t think it’s a good plan,” she made herself say. Winced. No better than _I have a bad feeling_ after all. “Any Imperial facility linked to the Death Star will be hot now. They won’t just be prepared for us to try something. They’ll be counting on it.”

K-2 said nothing, Jyn tucked her hands beneath her armpits. If Cassian was named for the mission, the droid had already considered more factors and causal effects than there were seconds to lay sleepless on it.

“There are currently two-hundred-and six known Imperial facilities of interest,” K-2 allowed. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “And I can guarantee you, notwithstanding the attack on Scarif, all of them are, as you say, ‘counting on it’.”

“But Coruscant?” Jyn snapped, bit the inside of her cheek. “All of my father’s work was relocated to Eadu. It’s a pointless risk, for nothing.”

The droid turned back to the circuitport, Jyn assumed the conversation was done.

“Would it make you feel better,” K-2 said abruptly, “if Cassian was not taking this _pointless risk_ alone?”

“Already figured you’d be on board,” Jyn murmured. “And… yeah.”

She shifted her weight, stalled on her heel.

“As moved as I am by your stirring vote of confidence, I was not referring to myself.” K-2’s tone was dry, softer when Jyn glanced up in surprise. “Check the call sheet again. Cassian volunteered. _You_ were assigned.”

-

Jyn found Cassian in the repair hangar, the gutted remains of their U-Wing still far from operable. He was crouched below the fusial thrust intake, something pitch and oily had dripped down his cheek.

“You heard about the surveillance assignment,” he said, didn’t look up.

“You knew that from my footsteps?”

“If your footsteps are a seven-foot Imperial droid, then yes.” Cassian apparently joked so rarely that even he seemed distracted when he heard himself.

“Why me?” She was aiming for offhand, hit accusing instead. “Running with the Partisans was hardly a lesson in reconnaissance.”

Cassian dragged his palms over a rag, emerged from beneath the engine.

“Is it a problem?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Cassian stared her down, Jyn felt her mouth grit in irritation.

“I haven’t seen the facility since I was _four_ ,” she said tightly. “If that means I have a better chance of flying under the radar, I’ll take it. It doesn’t mean I agree, doesn’t mean it’ll work. And it definitely doesn’t mean you should throw yourself in beside, just because you brought me into the alliance. It was my decision. My consequences.”

She raised her jaw, braced for the fallout. Cassian waited, unreadable.

“And if you’re not professionally invested,” she added, curt so her voice didn’t shake. “If you’re doing it to keep some sort of an eye on me-”

This time, Cassian didn’t bother to mask his expression. Jyn wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed or disappointed to realise that wasn’t it.

“We do have maps, you know,” he said evenly. “Maps. Intelligence. Contacts. We don’t just drop people in the field based on what they may or may not have known eighteen years ago.”

In the silence that followed, Jyn felt her cheeks flush uncomfortably hot.

“Your name came up because you fit the profile. All records of you were obliterated on Scarif, along with anyone who might have seen you there. You’re a rebel Sergeant. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly manned with a lot of options here.”

Jyn breathed out. It only took a shift in Cassian’s posture to see the Imperial again, the way he spoke and held himself. When he met her gaze, Jyn wondered if he was staring at the same.

“So you’re just along for the thrill of it?”

At the far side of the hangar a door rasped open, the ground crew gearing up for the night.

“It’s a job that needs doing.” Cassian watched her, didn’t blink. “And we make a good team.”

The words lingered, small, unknown things that she wanted to pocket before they came apart.

“You, me, and K-2SO,” she muttered. “Team spirit at it’s finest.”

It felt better than expected when Cassian returned a wry smile.

“He shared a similar sentiment.”

They stood, shadows flickering as the fluorescents spluttered.

“I won’t tell you it isn’t dangerous,” Cassian said quietly. “We tend not to bother with the boring places.”

Jyn resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The decimated U-Wing loomed over his shoulder.

“And if you want out-”

“That’s hardly what I’m-”

“Well maybe it should be.” Cassian’s tone was more brisk than harsh. “It isn’t easy going back. My place was Carida. I could forget until I had to walk through the grounds, wear Imperial grey like the protest meant nothing.”

Cassian, typically sparse with gestures, gave a terse flinch of his hand to punctuate the sentence. When he dropped it, Jyn saw his fingers were trembling. He forced his mouth to a line.

“I thought if I got through the mission, the first pain wouldn’t matter. Because the second one would be so much worse.” He shrugged, exhaled. “That or I’d come out feeling nothing at all.”

What attempt he made at a smile turned down at the corners, and before Jyn had realised it, she’d wrapped an arm around his neck, pulled him into a rough embrace. If she’d had time to think, she’d have expected him grave and unforgiving, quick to tense away. Instead, his shoulders slackened at her touch, chest warm through his shirt. He lowered his head, his jaw almost resting on her jacket. Head catching up to her reflexes, Jyn let go before any of it tied together, leaving Cassian slightly unsteady.

“It was neither,” he said after a moment. “Looking back made me realise there’s nothing more important than this fight.” He grazed a palm across the smudge at his cheek, seeming to notice it for the first time.

Jyn wanted to reach for him again. She turned to the U-Wing, utility kit and parts strewn at their boots. Cassian knelt back below the hull.

“Now I wonder if I was wrong.”

-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading :’) <3 aaaa thinking about these two really gets to me. a lot. ;___;


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